Words Nobody Says
by haveyouseenmyhaggis
Summary: In which Clint Barton loses the game he made for himself and learns that when you fall so fast and so hard and so far, you don't even feel it when you hit the bottom.


Clint is nothing if not a talented actor. He's almost proud of himself that the rest of the team think he's fine after the ordeal with Loki. It's not long before nobody even mentions it anymore and he's so good at plastering on a smile in the morning that nobody even asks him about it. It's almost like a game, he realises, and the more the plays it the better he gets; a twisted game of Cheat.

Pause. Deep breath. Smile. Face the day. Easy as that. And it _is _as easy as that. It's so frighteningly simple because he's had practise. He is the master at the game he wrote himself, after all.

What's even easier is washing the smile off at the end of the day. It's a completely effortless, he thinks. It's so simple to just let the smile fade away but he never really lets the emotions show - to do that would be to lose his own game. It's still losing even if nobody's watching. He thinks it would be so _easy _to lose. So easy. He only has to sit quiet for a few moments before the pain catches up at and _there it is..._

_Hate_. Sheer, undiluted, self-hatred. _"Traitor,"_ his mind screams at him, over and over and over and _over _and-... Nobody says it, but Clint knows what he is.

No. It's not even hate. It's _loathing. _It's so deep in his bones that he knows he can't just shake it off the same way he usually does with anything he doesn't want to feel - he is something of an expert in erasing anxiety and apprehension after all. He has to be, doesn't he?

This is different. This is so deep in him that it hurts and he doesn't even have to be thinking about it - except, he's always thinking about it. It's always there. Right at the back of his mind like an itch he can't reach. It's just _there_. _"Your fault. Your fault. Your fault." _Words nobody dares speak out loud but what he assumes they must all think - and if they don't, they _should. _It's his fault Loki turned him into a puppet. "_You should have been stronger. Quicker." _It's his fault Phil is dead. _"You should have been there." _

He won't cry though; he won't even admit that he's hurting - he keeps fighting and reminds himself that he can't lose control. Clint Barton doesn't cry. _"You deserve to have to deal with this alone." _Nobody says that but Clint thinks they should.

And so he just makes himself busy. He needs to keep moving. It's easy to be busy - to find endless distractions and lie that he's okay. Again, he can act. If Clint Barton can do anything, he can act. It comes naturally. Like breathing.

Except breathing is getting harder and harder now, and acting along with it. As soon as he's still, it hurts and it starts burning through his body like a fire he doesn't know how to extinguish. But he's doing a pretty good job of hiding it, he thinks. Nobody knows how much he's hurting inside because he can smile and laugh and joke as he always did - ever there with a sarcastic comment... He won't ever let it show that it's starting to feel blinding - that he's forgetting how to pretend he's okay because he can't remember what that's like. Even when it gets too much and he wants to tear himself out of his skin, he won't show it.

It's all in a mistake that it comes out and he falls apart. It's a simple miscalculation - a shot he misses by just a fraction. But it's enough. His act has slipped... Eyes on the target, nock, draw... That's where he pauses, his fingers pressed into his jaw, eyes glued on the target faces feet in front of him. Breathe in. Hold it. Think. Let it go. Shoot. He knows this pattern better than he knows the order of the alphabet. Easier than A, B, C...

Except when it's not.

The arrow misses the target by less than a centimetre but it's enough. His whole body tenses; his shoulders rise and his fingers curl around his bow so tightly it almost hurts. Almost. His breath catches in his throat - and that's when he knows he's lost. Breathing is everything. If he can't find the control there, he has no foundation on which to build his act. He closes his eyes for a second, just so he can't see his mistake but the cracks in his composure are already starting to show to his invisible audience.

Is there an audience? He's not sure.

He thinks briefly about Tony Stark who has a habit of checking up on them all over the security cameras. Is he watching this? Maybe Bruce is there too. And Steve? Possibly. He lets out a near hysterical laugh when the words someone said at Phil's funeral flood into his head: "He'll still be watching over us..."Maybe Phil is watching this. Watching his favourite little archer struggle to hold himself together.

_"Disgrace. What a fucking disgrace." _Words nobody says but Clint knows they should all be thinking.

He feels the tears start to flow down his cheeks and it seems he's his own worst enemy. He fights against it the whole time, drawing in deep rattling breaths that don't quite do what he needs them to do. What he wants them to do. So he keeps trying, gulping down air. Instead it feels like a million little knives tearing at his chest, ripping his throat from his body.

It's so _hard_ to fall apart. He knows know that he was so, so wrong. It's not easy to fall. No, it's agonising to lose his grip on his pretence. But there's nothing he can do to stop now - there's nothing to hold on to, nobody to pull him back up. It's like a wildfire going unchecked in a thick forest - seeking anything to fuel the flames - any flicker of negative feeling becomes part of an even greater inferno, searing into his heart.

He goes to take a step forward to get his arrow but his legs down work. Instead, he just collapses to the floor, dropping his head into his hands. His fingers lock in his hair like he's trying to keep himself together but it won't work. Of_ course_ it won't work. _"Don't be so fucking stupid." _The things nobody says hurt the most.

It's like he's trapped in his own mind, his own thoughts destroying him from the inside, burning and burning until all he can feel is the hot sting of tears leaving trails down his face. But he's cold. He's so cold. He's shivering and curling up into himself on the floor but it doesn't stop. "_You don't deserve it to stop._"

It's almost like he hears the screaming before he realises he's the one doing the screaming. The sound tears from his throat, ragged and raw and breathless and all he can do is tilt his head back and let it happen, howling like a wounded animal. This is nothing but raw emotion, he realises. Right now he is nothing but hurt and guilt and desperation, spiraling deeper and deeper down.

But he deserves this. He absolutely fucking deserves this. _"Traitor. It's your fault. Your fault..." _

Clint likens it to falling from a cliff - all he can hear is a rushing in his ears, deaf to everything else and it's all happening so fast he hasn't got time to do anything about it. He's falling. Slipping lower and lower into the abyss and hitting every jutting rock on the way down. He screams and cries and he can't breathe in and he can't think straight.

But the thing about falling like this though (hard and fast and so far you can't even see where you fell from)... Sometimes you fall so far and so hard you don't even feel anything anymore by the time you hit the bottom. Sometimes you're so far gone by then that it just ... happens. The inevitable crash. And if you survive the fall, you lie there exhausted, too defeated to pick up your broken pieces.

But you don't feel anything anymore. There's nothing left to feel. Just broken pieces to fix. Only now, nobody will believe you're okay because how can anyone possibly miss your broken pieces. Everyone can see the damage, even if they didn't see the fall.

"You didn't deserve this Clint." That's what they say. "It wasn't your fault - we still trust you..." That's what Natasha says. She's the one that finds him.

But Clint doesn't feel anything anymore.


End file.
